The local unit of Virgin Mobile Latin America, run by
Richard Branson's Virgin Group, struck a deal in January to
lease capacity from Telefonica and plans to start operations
early in 2015, Phil Wallace, co-founder and chairman of the
Virgin unit, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Wallace said the company was targeting 15- to 30-year-old
consumers with prepaid plans, a strategy that has yielded 1
million Latin American subscribers since Virgin started Chilean
operations in 2012 and arrived in Colombia last year.

Virgin is launching its Brazilian venture as the country's
crowded wireless market slows sharply from a recent boom, when
falling prices and low unemployment fueled service growth to
more than 270 million mobile connections in a country with fewer
than 200 million people.

Revenue growth has slowed to a crawl over the past year, due
to tighter credit and eroding consumer confidence, reinforcing
expectations among some analysts of consolidation among Brazil's
major four mobile carriers.

In coming years, Wallace said he expects 10 to 15 percent of
Brazil's mobile subscribers will use so-called "virtual
operators" such as Virgin, which use third-party networks to
sell plans under their own brands.

Virgin Mobile Latin America recently raised $86 million in
fresh capital and took out a $42 million credit line to start
service in Brazil and Mexico, which it will launch this year,
the company said.
(Reporting by Luciana Bruno; Writing by Brad Haynes; Editing by
Richard Chang)